A new issue of Ducts is out. The mess he made: A life-long slob decides it's time to get organized. From The Hindu, a review of Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear by Rajni Bakshi. Life after death, in digital form: When you’re gone, what happens to your Web estate? Ladies gotta get some: A book battle between The Surrender by Toni Bentley and The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet. Oh, that Seventies feeling: Historians are finally starting to show that there was a lot more to the “Me Decade” than we might have thought. How language reflects the balance of good and bad in the world. A review of books on Iran. How sweet it wasn't: Hershey’s W. Jeffrey Hurst explains the difference between Maya chocolate and the stuff in the brown can. A review of Quentin Tarantino: Life at the Extremes by Aaron Barlow. Is the daytime talk-show dead? Tyra Banks seems to think so. Apparently the Gods of Google have descended from Cybertopia Mountain to issue a new commandment, inscribed in search engine optimized stone: “Thou shalt not be a cougar”. Why a good memory is bad for you: The counterintuitive finding that too good a memory makes foragers inefficient reveals a glimpse of the forces that govern the evolution of intelligence. Hegel at Georgetown and the Master-Slave Dialectic: An excerpt from Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Losing My Cool. Here are 6 famous explorers who shaped the world (with insane lies). A review of Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight. These days, there's a good chance that a young mom or dad will point at Peter Yarrow and tell the kids, “That's Puff the magic dragon's daddy”. Brendan Boyle reviewsThe Thief of Time: Philosophical Essays on Procrastination.

From TLS, a review of Scandal on Stage: European Theater as Moral Trial by Theodore Ziolkowski. From Arion, a review of The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched by Paul Woodruff (and more). From Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, an essay on the theatre and civilisation; a review of Memory in Play: From Aeschylus to Sam Shepard by Attilio Favorini; and a review of Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems by Nicolas Ridout. Young Jean Lee wants to banish Disney from America's stages — the result is exciting and unnerving. Mere fact, mere fiction: In an impassioned riposte to his critics, David Hare argues why good theatre should never be confused with journalism. A review of The American Stage: Writing on Theater From Washington Irving to Tony Kushner (from the Library of America). Measuring theatre success: The play's a hit but how can you tell? Backers of a new system claim audience reaction is the best indication of effectiveness. From Bookforum, Deborah Jowitt reviewsThe New Music Theater: Seeing the Voice, Hearing the Body by Eric Salzman and Thomas Desi. The new face of Yiddish theater: An article on the magic of Shane Baker. Enter God, stage left: Sex and politics permeate the theatre, but religion rarely gets a look in — and it's time for a comeback. From The New Yorker, a look at David Mamet on his methods as a director and writer. Are plays proper literature? The collaborative and transient nature of theatre clearly spooks the gatekeepers of "real literature" — it shouldn't. Are we in an age of globalized theatre? Dan Rebellato investigates. Benjamin Radford on the theatre haunted by a doughnut-eating poltergeist. Check out PlayBlog for Broadway news and theatre information by the staff of Playbill.com.